New Horizons by Max Roy

                  Choosing Your News How the world has changed! We always assumed that the news we might get about world events would be the same wherever we looked to get it. Not anymore! Your news, whether the detail reported, the spin on how it is reported, or whether events are reported at all, really depends on where you look for it. Maybe that was always true and we never realized it. Well, we realize it now. After the October 7 th attack on Israel by Hamas the world’s airways were flooded by reports about Israel’s occupation of that place when Israel had left the territory more than twenty years previously. Few in the media mentioned that. Immediately there was talk of genocide by Israel when it was Hamas that had opened hostilities and placed their civilians in harm’s way as Israel pursued those who had brutally murdered mostly civilians, even burned babies alive in front of their parents before execu...

                           Terrorism Where do I begin. Maybe I should start with a definition. So many of the groups that I would consider terrorists, these days, are being called “militants” by the media. For me terrorists are non-state actors violently attacking unarmed civilians, and even state actors, in the name of some cause they are promoting. Some groups may actually look and act like armies with territorial ambitions to control spaces where they can act out a program.   At their heart , terrorists have no regard for anyone that may stand in their way. They often have loyalty only to an idea and the losses they sustain in carrying out their program seem unimportant to their leadership. State actors by contrast are usually held to a code of conduct. My particular focus is on the many Islamic groups that are motivated by messianic aims related to estab...

    Why Hamas and Hezbollah Attacked Israel! Iran has been financing proxies on Israel’s border to eliminate the state of Israel. Israel faced continuous missile attacks from Gaza over the past few years, to which Israel responded in kind. On October 7 th /23 Israel was attacked by Hamas from Gaza, killing 1200 people, mainly civilians, even babies. Hamas captured 250 hostages on that day as well. Since then, Israel has attacked Hamas which threatened, and still threatens, to repeat that attack again. They have refused to surrender or release the hostages. They have even executed some of the hostages since that date. And they have continued to hide their efforts behind civilian infrastructure like schools, hospitals, U.N. facilities, mosques and civilian shelters. Hamas hides in tunnels they have constructed over the past decades. They force civilians, sometimes at gunpoint, to act as human shields for their military activities and weapons storages. Although Israel attempt...

                                 OUR FALLEN LEAVES       Far into the undergrowth of our memories, the vegetation of our pasts, beneath the event trees of our lives, lie, like fallen leaves, residual memories of our happenings. Most are curled up and dry, husks of what they once were. Some have been blown so far and wide they may be impossible to recall. Some are of such mystery that they may not even be truly ours. Most are spasms of random imagination once infused with life. Some are residues of our current thoughts regarding the day’s happenings.   We may have among them tales and commentaries, efforts of ours that imbued the floating shards in our mind with the living juice of life. Sometimes they  came alive, have breath, and show the true colors they had, may have had, could have had, at the instants of...

                      Complaints, Complaints! I am of a generally positive frame of mind, with a cheery outlook on life. Like most of you, I like our times together with others to be happy ones, or, at least, pleasant. In spite of this, my blushing Bride of many years accuses me of being “picky”, of being a “brat”. I think it is important that we try and live in a positive environment. Psychologists advise us to avoid those who might be among us who are likely to spread drear and fear. Life’s too short, right! Laugh it up if you can! I have been giving the matter some serious thought. Do I want the prevailing image of me held by other people to be one that I am “difficult”? Do I have to change my behavior? Hey, this is important stuff! The whole of our social lives may be hanging in the balance! What’s this about me being a “brat” and “picky”? Often, this issue has revolved around food. ...

                            Where Do We Go From Here? What a pickle we are in!   Pax Americanus is dead.. America, the superpower victor of WWII, faced down Russian aspirations for hegemony. China’s communist power was still struggling to digest its gains. Japan was under American tutelage. The European Union was created to end all wars on that continent. The UN was still coming into being. America was the world’s peacekeeper and was ready to spend blood and treasure to work its will. Today, we have China flexing its muscles, buying stakes and influencing in dozens of countries around the world. It is aggressively seeking to advance its territorial influence. The UK is a spent force instead of an imperial power. The EU continues to fray at the edges, fearful of a resurgent, mischief-making Russia, and buying in to Chinese bribery. Iran has arisen as a w...

    “Blessed Is The Match That Is Consumed In Kindling Flame”* All of us want to live fulfilling lives. That’s normal. And reasonable. That is reasonable when things around us are normal, when the world is normal. How about when that is not the case? How about then? When the world is consumed in war, and world-wide disruption, it is normal that life is not normal. We are coerced into doing things that we would not otherwise do. Or we choose to do things that we would not otherwise do. It becomes normal to do the abnormal. Hannah Senesch, a Hungarian immigrant to Mandate Palestine as a teenager, volunteered to be one of thirty-seven Jewish volunteers recruited by the British. Their job was to parachute into Eastern Europe in 1943, to help the partisans fighting the Nazis. Even when her companions withdrew because they considered it too dangerous, she went on. She was caught, tortured and executed just before her 23 rd birthday. In her own poetic words, “I heard the cal...

  Stories About Our Lives   Have you ever thought about writing the story of your life? Here you are, let’s say. You are about fifty or sixty, perhaps seventy or more.   So much has happened in your life, but you know you have more in the past than you can expect in your future. Surely you think there is much more coming, there are some crowning glories you are hoping to pull off. But you are pleased with the things you have accomplished so far. There have been some hiccups, but you have overcome them. It may be useful to examine some of those as you face some future challenges you know about. We don’t’ necessarily want the world to know the real story. We may leave hints just for the fun of it-to see if the determined, the curious, the conspiracy theorists, can follow the tortuous trail blazed through the thickets of our minds. After all, they are mysterious, jagged zig-zags of electric-nano-energies trickling between the cellular protuberances of our brain. Random...